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“He’s a humble kid,” Wall said, per the Los Angeles Times’ Tania Ganguli. “Doesn’t say to much. Just plays the game. Plays with a low demeanor. That’s something you can respect about him. He lets his game do the talking.”

The Wizards’ All-Star point guard thinks Ball will “be fine,” so long as people are “patient” with him and understand that he’s not “an angry, aggressive type of guy.”

As far as “torturing” Lonzo at Staples Center on Wednesday as Gortat suggested on Twitter, Wall insisted that the syllabus he has in store for the UCLA product is no different than what he’d put forth for any young point guard.

“You want to show rookies what this league is about, point blank, period,” Wall, the No. 1 pick in the 2010 draft, went on. “That’s what I’m all about. That happened to me. Every point guard I played. Even the guys taht weren’t a top-10 point guard, a top-15 point guard, those guys are going to target you.”

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Wall is aware of Ball’s reputation as a long-range shooting threat, despite the funky form, but noted that “In this league, you gotta prove you can do it.” Through three regular season games, Ball has converted 34.8 percent of his field-goal attempts and 29.4 percent of his threes—not yet numbers demanding respect from opposing defenses.

“First year, you might be able to get by with getting to the basket not being able to make jump shots,” he said. “But if you want to be somebody in this league and be something special, you’ve gotta learn how to knock down a couple shots.”

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Wall sounded optimistic about Zo’s game, and that “A lot of people are gonna want to come play for the Lakers.”

“They have a point guard where they can believe in him,” he said. “They can put their team behind [him], and then you’ll have guys that are willing to come play with him.”

That’s been the Lakers’ plan since the summer: To clear cap space for a run at two max-level free agents in July 2018—like, say, LeBron James and Paul George—and show enough on the court this season to attract those high-priced wandering eyes.